GAINING COMMUNITY SUPPORT 2$

quainted and talk together with those who are
sponsoring and those who are carrying out the
family life education program.

Whether the leaders in this work are local teach-
ers, known by name in many homes but personally
in but a few, or whether the leaders are strangers
who have come to initiate and set up the work,
their first and pleasant task would be to establish
a feeling of friendliness, approachability, and con-
fidence between themselves and the parents of
their students.

Without any attempt at asking permission or in-
dividual balloting, the parents, like the school
faculty, must be made to feel included as a part of
the work and necessary to its success, as indeed
they are.

More direct methods of gaining parental sane-
tion have proved unsatisfactory. Putting to indi-
vidual vote the decision of whether or not to con-
duct a course in sex education or family life
education, either at such a meeting or by mail or
by distributing questionnaires, is usually unpro-
ductive of satisfactory results. A community may
be psychologically ready for an innovation but not
ready to give the deciding vote to put it into ac-
tion. People shrink from taking the responsibility.
They say, "I don't know enough about it." This i$